On March 19, the Pratt Institute 2024 Alumni Achievement Awards will be presented to three accomplished alumni at a luncheon held at ROBERT in the Museum of Arts and Design in Manhattan.
The awards recognize outstanding graduates who have distinguished themselves in their fields, who have earned a high degree of respect among their colleagues and in the general community, and whose impact has been felt on a regional, national, or international level. The award recipients were chosen through a nomination process and selected by a committee of past Alumni Achievement Award honorees.
This year, Alumni Achievement Awards will be presented to:
Marilyn Nance, BFA Communications Design ’76
Lifetime Achievement Award, honoring a Pratt graduate whose work has challenged existing paradigms over the course of a prominent career.
Marilyn Nance has produced images of unique moments in the cultural history of the US and the African diaspora. While serving as the photographer for the US delegation of FESTAC ’77, also known as the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture, Nance made one of the most comprehensive photographic accounts of this landmark Pan-African festival of arts and culture. Marilyn Nance: Last Day in Lagos, published in 2022, is a focused study of Nance through an archival encounter with her documentation of FESTAC.
Nance is a two-time finalist for the W. Eugene Smith Award in Humanistic Photography. Her work is in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and the Library of Congress, and has been published in The World History of Photography, A History of Women Photographers, and The Black Photographers Annual. She lives in New York.
Nasreen Alkhateeb, BFA Fine Arts ’07
Impact Award, recognizing a Pratt graduate for contributions that have made a deep and meaningful positive impact.
Nasreen Alkhateeb is an award-winning filmmaker whose work illuminates historically excluded voices. Her ability to motivate audiences is a direct result of approaching a story through multiple identities: multi-heritage, Black, Iraqi, first-gen, Muslim, LGBTQ, and being a person with multiple disabilities.
She has lensed series for Apple+, FX, Netflix, Vogue, and Emmy-winning series Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man. Her credits include PBS, NASA, Kamala Harris, Naomi Osaka, UN Women, Microsoft, the Women’s March, and Remedy Health Media. She executive produced East of the River, which screened at the Tribeca Film Festival, and directed campaigns for GitHub, NASA and the Women’s March, with an emphasis on LGBTQIA+, Disabled, and BIPOC voices.
Alkhateeb was honored with the Wild Card award by her NASA peers, is a fellow of Sundance’s Accessible Futures Intensive, a fellow of The Disruptors, an alum of the RespectAbility Lab, a fellow of the WIF Creative Circle, and the Disability Futures Fellowship in partnership with The Mellon Foundation, The Ford Foundation, and administered by United States Artists. Forbes described her as “breaking barriers.”
Alkhateeb helped lead the 2022 RespectAbility Lab, dedicated to introducing twenty disabled writers and directors to studios like Disney, Sony, Lionsgate, DreamWorks, and Warner Brothers.
Devin B. Johnson, MFA Fine Arts (Painting and Drawing) ’19
Rising Star Award, recognizing a Pratt graduate for significant success and promise of sustained contributions to their creative industry.
Devin B. Johnson is a multidisciplinary artist living in Brooklyn. He paints from improvised, freestyle digital collages sourced from personal and historical imagery arranged into fictional, sentimental situations. In addition to being named a 2023 artist-in-residence for Fountainhead, Miami, he was selected as an Artsy Vanguard (2022), named to Forbes 30 Under 30 Art and Design (2022) list, was included in Cultured’s Young Artists 2021, and was one of sixteen artists from around the world selected for the inaugural year of the Black Rock Senegal residency (2020).
His work is collected by Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Pond Society, Shanghai; the Rubell Museum, Miami; the Columbus Museum of Art; Longlati Foundation, Shanghai; and many others. Recent exhibitions include Devin B. Johnson, Nicodim, Los Angeles (2024, solo, forthcoming); Samantha Joy Groff, Devin B. Johnson, Katherina Olschbaur, Nicodim, New York (2023); Galeria Nicodim, Bucharest: 10 Years, Galeria Nicodim, Bucharest (2023); PRESENT ’23, Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus (2023); Ritornellos, Nicoletti Contemporary, London (2023); MATERNITY LEAVE: NONE OF WOMEN BORN, Nicodim in collaboration with Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas (2023); Joshua Hagler, Devin B. Johnson, Nicola Samorì, Hugo Wilson, Nicodim, Los Angeles (2023); Night Owl, Massimo de Carlo (2022); and Dak’Art Biennial, Dakar, Senegal (2022).
Learn more about the 2024 Alumni Achievement Awards and information on how to register.